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Number of IT staff in the profession will shrink by 15
per cent: Gartner
25 May, 2005
by Mark Cox
Research firm Gartner advised leaders of information systems
(IS) departments to decide by the end of this year whether
the long-term future of their departments lies in delivering
information technology (IT) services to individual business
units or in offering strategic value to the wider business.
The choice is being forced upon IS leaders by the accelerating
capabilities of external service providers and the increasing
need for IT services.
In addition Gartner warned IS leaders to act now to safeguard
the value that business technology contributes and predicts
that by 2010, the number of IT staff in the profession will
shrink by 15 per cent.
"The IS organization will need to either reinvent itself
to create and manage assets of business processes and relationships,
or it must choose to focus on the sourcing and execution of
IT services," said John Mahoney, worldwide chief of research
for IT services and management at Gartner. "Our advice
to IS leaders is that although they have some very difficult
decisions to make over the fate of their department; they
need to act now as the transition will take a number of years."
Mahoney pointed to the competitive pressures from external
service providers who will be able to offer standards of professionalism
and price that internal IS organizations may find difficult
to match as a further factor.
Gartner said that as IT becomes a more integral part of every
business function, there will be increasing numbers of people
outside the IS organization whose work involves IT, and as
IT skills become a more important component of business professionalism,
in-house IS staff will be displaced.
Gartner predicts that by 2010, six out of 10 people affiliated
with the IS organization will assume business-facing roles
around information, process and relationships. As a result,
Gartner predicts that the size of the IS organization will
decrease, and that by 2010 IT departments in midsize and large
companies will be at least one-third smaller than they were
in 2000.
David Flint, research vice president at Gartner, said, "As
we see departments within businesses taking on the traditional
functions of IT, so IS professionals and leaders will have
to choose between careers as technologists, technical managers
and business professionals. To ensure the quality of their
work, organizations will need to establish 'profession management'
for selected roles across the whole business. The end result
will see many former IS employees in professions in which
their manager or head of profession does not sit within IS."
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